What exactly is a mantra?
A mantra is a sound or series of sounds which, when chanted with awareness, can set up powerful vibrations in the body and mind and lift you to higher and subtler levels of consciousness .
The word mantra comes from the root man ('to think') or manas (mind) and the suffix ' tra' (to liberate)
Traditionally, a mantra is defined in this way: manah traayate iti mantrah (that which helps to cross the mind is a mantra) or mananaat traayate iti mantrah (mantra is that which protects those who reflect on it).
The whole science of mantras is based on the understanding of the dual nature of prana.
Prana acts as a subtle biological energy which catches the vibrations of the mind and transmits them to the nerves and plexuses of the body. At the same time, it can transmit the physical vibrations to the mind. So prana acts as an intermediary between the physical and mental energies.
When prana is expressed as sound, the process is known as uccara. Through proper uccara, we can alter both physical and mental energies, as well as convert one to the other.
In the East, language was used to transmit both meaning and vibrations. The Sanskrit language itself has both linguistic and phonetic importance. It was created not only to convey mental concepts, but also to transmit definite vibrations.
That is why our ancient mantras have both linguistic as well as phonetic importance.
Not only the meaning, but the very vibration of the mantra is of tremendous value!
You will see that in the east, many mantras are chanted regularly, even if people don't always understand the meaning. This is not blind belief; it is based on the science of sound. If you understand the meaning of the mantra, that's good, you will feel connected to the mantra - but even if you don't understand, those vibrations will work on you!
The world's best preserved scriptures belong to Vedic literature.
When I say 'best preserved', I mean that the original form has not been altered or modified over thousands of years.
And the surprising thing is, these scriptures were not written down for many thousands of years! They were simply transmitted orally from Master to disciple in the Guru-shishya parampara (Guru-disciple tradition) over many hundreds of generations. Even so, after 10,000 years, not only the words, but even the style of chanting and intonation has not been altered. Even the most minor details are still being strictly followed. This is because they have understood the power of these vibrations.
All the sacred mantras of the Vedic Tradition have arisen out of the enlightened consciousness of the ancient Masters. That is why, the very vibration of the mantra can give you a glimpse of the same space. When an enlightened Master utters a mantra it is called initiation, deeksha.
Even if you don't understand the meaning, those vibrations straight away penetrate your being and start working on you.
That is why it is beneficial to receive a mantra from an enlightened being. Especially if chanting is going to be your main spiritual practice, taking mantra-deeksha from a spiritual Master is essential.
The power of the mantra is not only in the word, but also in the spiritual charge transmitted through it. This charge is known as mantra-chaitanya. When you receive a mantra that has been imbued with this charge, it will not only raise the power of the mantra thousandfold, it will also protect you from the possible ill-effects of wrong chanting or negligence in your practice.
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Any mantra, if it comes from the enlightened experience, from the pure inner space, can simply transport you to the same space. You do not know why, how or what, but you suddenly see it is true! It clicks, even if one part of your logic continues to fight.
You may be thinking, how can just the vibration of a sound work on us, if we don't understand its meaning?
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Just notice all the different sounds you encounter in your day-to-day life! From the time you wake up, till you go to sleep at night, you are living in an ocean of sound.
How many of these sounds carry meaning?
But how is it that the same sounds have almost the same effect on everybody?
For example, certain kinds of music make us happy, others make us feel sad, others make us feel energetic. Even if there are no words, usually everybody reacts in the same way to the same music.
Everyone finds natural sounds soothing, while Monday-morning traffic sounds have tremendous power to drive us crazy!
This is not just because of the constant mental association of the sounds with a certain mood.
The truth is, different sounds have the definite power to hold different energy vibrations, and so they affect us in distinct ways.
Have you heard of a Japanese scientist called Dr. Masaru Emoto? He recently published a beautiful book called 'The Hidden Messages in Water'.
In this book, he describes a beautiful experiment he had conducted. In this experiment, Dr. Emoto filled ten glasses of water from the same source. He kept the ten glasses in ten different rooms, under similar conditions.
Every day, he would go into the first room and utter some positive words near the glass of water. He would create positive vibrations by uttering words like love, peace, silence.
Then he would go into the second room and create strongly negative vibrations by uttering words like hatred, violence, terrorism and so on.
Then he would go into the third room and chant some verses from the Buddhist scripture Dhammapada. In the other rooms, he played different kinds of music, recited prayers and so on.
Then he froze the different water samples and studied their crystalline structure under a microscope with the help of high-speed photography. He studied thousands of these crystals under tightly regulated conditions. The results he came up with were simply amazing!
The water which had been energized through positive words, prayer chanting or healing music were perfectly crystallized and shining like diamonds! The samples which had been exposed to negative vibrations did not form regular crystals. Not only was the structure irregular, the water itself had a cloudy colour.
He repeated this experiment many times, with the same results.
He concluded that water can respond to the vibrations created by your words!
Your system is 80% water. Can you imagine the effect of different vibrations on your inner space?
This fact was well-known in ancient Bharat. That is why the river Ganga, the lifeline of Bharat, was continuously purified and energized by thousands of rishis through the chanting of mantras. Not only water, even the air inside temples was filled with the positive vibrations of mantras. Even today, mantras are continuously chanted in temples and homes to cleanse and energize the space.